When I see that someone is painting their house, I always say, "Hey! Why didn't anyone ask me!"... (as if my color opinion matters :)
I live on a fairly busy street in San Francisco, so it wasn't too surprising when, after painting a number of color swatches on the side of my house, people would stop, tilt their head in concentration, squint their eyes, and have discussions about the many options before them. Someone even wrote a note next to a bright orange swatch, then scribbled it out, so I'm not sure exactly what it says, but I'm pretty sure it starts out with "Anything but..". The amount of conversation my paint swatches is creating is so heart warming. It makes me wonder if others are thinking, when looking at my house, "Why didn't they ask ME?!"
Well, I would love to ask you, and if you came here by way of Nextdoor, you'll see that I did, in fact, ask you! I love hearing the community's opinions (as long as it isn't "techies suck!" or similar). But in addition to hearing what others think, I wanted to give you a view into my intricate thought process, and how I settled on my new house colors.
My home is a typical San Francisco Spanish Mediterranean, with an orange brick facade on the bottom, stucco on the top, and wood siding. For the last 10 years, I have loved our current paint colors, a deep denim blue with light blue trim, perfectly complementing the orange brick, with a pop of orange around the lower window panes on the front. The back of the house, not having the orange brick to compete with, coordinates with the patio rails, which are light and dark tones of sage green. The windows on the back of the house are painted to match the patio. ... sounds like a lot going on, right? I agree!
This last rainy season, we suffered some water damage when the leaves on the roof clogged the down spout and the sun beaten south side of the house let water in through cracks in the weathered paint. Dark colors absorb the sun, they told me. I don't care, I told them, I love this deep dark (now faded) blue. Turns out, they were right, and I should have listened, because that paint job only lasted 6 years. It is too much trouble and costs way too much to have to paint more than once every 10-15 years. So, as part of our leak prevention efforts, much to my chagrin, we need to paint the house a lighter color.
I've done a lot of research on house colors for this style of home. This orange brick is not easy to work with. Many homeowners have painted over the brick. I totally understand why, but I am not yet ready to cover up the historical and natural beauty of mine. When you look closely at the brick, you notice that it isn't actually orange. There are cream colored bricks, brown, brick red, rust... it's impossible to pick just one color to adequately represent them all. Even if you hone in on just one brick, try to isolate one shade, one spot, you can't, because each brick color, even one that looks orange from a slight distance, is made up of many other colors. If you try to pick one color that represents the overall look of "orange", it won't work, because that color doesn't actually exist within the brick! I have tried so. many. times.
Generally, paint colors relate to the brick on these houses in one of two ways: matching or complementary.
The matching category includes offwhite, cream, tan, light peach. It looks as though someone tried to match the brick by picking out one color from within it. Depending on how many different brick tones the particular house has (I've seen some with very uniform colored bricks), this strategy can work well. I prefer the off-whites and creams to the tan and peaches, personally. My house was painted peach with turquoise trim when we bought it. Cute, but not colors I would have chosen myself!
The complementary category includes grey, green, blue, and purple tones. One of my favorite paint jobs is just down the road, they chose a nice minty green with peachy orange highlights. Around the corner, there's a house with a mauvey purple-grey paint job. It's pretty good. And of course, my own house is an exemplary example of how well blue works with the orange brick.
But I can't paint my house a dark color again, it ages too quickly, causes too much damage. So repainting the same color (for the third time) is not an option. And I don't particularly like the matching colors (cream, peach, tan). So, then, what to do? light blue? hmmm maybe, but that might not feel like a big enough change. Plus, how would I coordinate that with the sage green patio rails? ooh, a light or sage green! That will be easy to coordinate with the back of the house. But... that just doesn't feel fresh and new enough since the back of the house has been sage for so long. So, purple, then? Well, a nice mauve would go well with the brick and complement the decorative spanish roof tiles that are tones of brick red, orange, and dark purple. But purple just isn't really "me".... hmmm
There are these beautiful trees that line our street. I am pretty sure they are called Chinese Elm, they have an intricately patterned camouflage look to their bark, silver, soft green, purply green, many shades of grey, and lovely dots and lines of orange here and there. It's the orange pop that made me think - I want to paint my house to match this tree!
Much like matching a brick that is made up of many colors, it is not easy to match the color of tree bark. I had to get really specific in my mind - which color, exactly, was it that I envisioned on my house? The green-grey tones would be ok, the purple-grey tones also... but the one I really wanted was close to silver. Like a real grey that wasn't greenish or purply. Just a nice soft shade of grey.
But I didn't trust myself that this specific grey would look good with my orange brick, even though it looks fantastic with the tree's dots and threads of a very similar orange. The painter and I tried out a ton of different combinations, all greys with different undertones, all that match some part of the tree bark. I was trying to figure out, for sure, the kind of grey I want to paint my house, whether to go with the more subdued greens or purply greys, or trust my gut... After about 30 tries, I decided that yes, I do want the kind of grey that is just grey.
But then, just as I was pretty sure I was heading in the right direction, a friend of mine told me about this article she read recently, "San Francisco Is Turning Grey - One House at a Time"... and I thought, oh no. I'm unintentionally following a trend that is frowned upon by some outspoken neighbors! As if I need to give them another reason to make me feel unwelcome here!
I appreciate the small history lesson in the article. They explain that grey homes were common in the 1940s, and it wasn't until the 1970s that people started to feel happier, and started to paint their homes with many colors, "It’s called the Colorist Movement. The paint on Victorians during this time made them feel funky and resplendent. Now, that’s how a lot of people think San Francisco houses should feel."
So I think, before, the first time we painted our house, when I was in my early 30s and my first kid was just born and Obama was in charge and I had recently left a good job that I loved to raise my family and things felt good, then my house WAS fittingly funky (I'd say quirky) and resplendent with its multiple shades of blue, orange, and green. But now, after too many years of Tr... anxiety inducing politics, impending environmental collapse, 11+ years raising my kids, struggling with an auto-immune disorder, dismissing reminders that "techies" and "gentrifiers" (meaning my family) are not welcome in my neighborhood, trying to form human connections with the people experiencing homelessness in the nearby park or in front of my house only to be met with leers... I no longer feel funky and resplendent. I feel tired. And it is possible that I wear my fatigue on my sleeve by choosing to paint my house grey. I am not painting my house grey because I lack opinion or imagination, as one of the commenters on the above article reasons.
I went to great effort trying to find a color that would last in the sun, was different from its current, long-standing, blue, that works well with multi-toned orange brick, and that would blend in with the surroundings, namely, the trees on our block.
I got super triggered by some of the comments in that article. But instead of adding fuel to that fire, I wrote this post, as evidence that not all "grey houses speak of the conformity and lack of imagination on the part of the owners and those whom they consult."
If you're in the neighborhood, please come by in late November to see the finished product! Slip a note in my mailbox to let me know what you think! Maybe I'll follow your creative direction in 10 years when we paint again...
-nina
P.S. A secret about this paint color is that I hope for it to be a base coat for a mural. Much easier to paint over a lightish grey than a deep, dark color. We shall see if that dream ever becomes a reality! But it's another reason I went with a non-color palette, the mural will be *sososo* colorful, I want IT to be the hero!
beautifully written